Special thanks to Laura Rooke for contributing this review!

SplashMoney for the Windows Mobile platform was released in January 2008.

If you are looking for a simple but very effective way to manage your finances, then this product may be for you. It includes a desktop application as well as the Windows Mobile application. Transactions can be entered on either desktop or device and then all changes can be synced between the two.

Installation was simple. I use a Vista 64 bit laptop. I connected my smartphone via Windows Mobile Device Center, and downloaded the software from the SplashData site. This installed the desktop application followed automatically, through Windows Mobile Device center, by the device application.

The interface is intuitive with good clear screens and has all the essentials you need for keeping track of your finances.

The first screen you are presented with is the Register Screen. This shows all the different accounts that you may want to manage – Checking, Savings, Credit Cards, etc. You can delete and change the preset accounts, and you can add your own accounts. This is the screen where you enter your individual transactions for each of the Accounts listed.

Setting up my accounts and registering transactions was straightforward. You assign a transaction to a category. There is a very large selection of categories and I only had to add a few of my own. Like other SplashData applications, a record is assigned an icon depending on its category. This makes for great visual scanning of transactions.

You also have a choice of classes of transactions – there are two preset classes, Personal or Business. You can add to these two classes if you need. I added one for my son’s college expenses and I find it really useful to see all these transactions separately.

You can also split a transaction and assign multiple classes and categories to it.

I really like being able to set up scheduled transactions. You can set SplashMoney to generate reminders to input these transactions or have SplashMoney input them automatically. I find this useful for payments that are automatically taken from my checking account on a monthly basis.

From the Register Screen, there are three other screens -

The Report screen allows you to view each different account either textually or as a pie chart. I love the pie chart format for seeing how my money is spent. You can filter the view in a variety of ways. I find the pie chart by category the most useful.

The Budget screen is for setting up budgeted amounts and then reporting your progress over different time frames – month, quarter or year – either the current or previous. I use this screen often for tracking such things as my grocery spending and gas spending.

The Reconcile screen is for reconciling your bank statement against SplashMoney. You enter your beginning and ending balance from your bank statement, and then check off your transactions until the difference between the bank statement and SplashMoney is zero.

You can almost do everything on either the handheld or on the PC. The reconciling is the only activity that can only be done on the PC. Entering data is obviously quicker and simpler to do on the PC, but it is very useful to record transactions while travelling. In fact it’s almost a must to be able to record certain transactions. I initially set up my accounts and entered balances on my PC and then synced to my handheld.

There were two good features that unfortunately I wasn’t able to test. The online banking feature as I don’t have an account that I can access this way, but it would be great to download my bank transactions into SplashMoney. You can also export and import to Quicken or Microsoft Money. I don’t have either of these programs, so I couldn’t test this valuable feature either.

The user guide is helpful and explains all the features in detail. It also takes you step by step through all the features. This guide is accessed from the Help option in the desktop application. There is no help in the handheld version and this might be a nice addition.

SplashMoney is a terrific application. It’s easy to navigate– great for the home user who just wants to record basic bank transactions… yet there are more complex features, which are easily navigated. I recommend reading about them in the software’s detailed help files.

Related Links

Download SplashMoney for Windows Mobile

Download SplashMoney for Palm OS

All SplashData applications

Filed under: Software reviews